The Crash Test Dummy accelerates. Australia is steaming ahead in the forced transition to unreliable energy

A lot of the reason for the growth in renewables is the Renewable Energy Target (the RET). Renewables must supply 16% of our electricity in 2018, and even more in 2019.

Strap yourself in. Buried in the AEMO summer readiness plan was the news that our intermittent renewables capacity is forecast to increase by fully 50% this year. All the renewables we had accrued in the two decade “transition” til December last year, we’ve added half again. We are already pushing the bounds of stability and setting price records, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. We are escalating the rate of change.

In toto, we have 56GW of generation of all sorts in the national grid on the east coast. The wind and solar component increased from 4GW at the end of 2017 to over 6GW by the end of 2018. But it doesn’t take much intermittent power to change the way the whole grid works.

Things are so fragile that a few weeks ago, when 240MW of reliable supply was suddenly not available for this summer, the AEMO had to issue a warning, and scramble to find some other spare capacity using the RERT (Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader). That includes “demand response” — code for planned blackouts of industry players or other customers. So if a mere 240MW goes missing from a 56,000MW system we have to call in emergency action. The whole Australian grid demand varies from 18GW to 35GW each day. Why does 240MW of reliable power matter so much?

Generators that work by an Act of God now make up 12% of our generation capacity. Thanks to an Act of Parliament, we are forced to buy 16% of our electricity generation from renewables. (Which includes hydropower as well).

Ramping up renewables

In the last quarter (Q3) we added an astonishing 1.2GW of wind and solar power alone. The increase in large scale solar was so significant that in just that quarter we added more large scale solar than we had in entirety at the end of 2017. Though large-scale-solar generation was so tiny I use it as a joke in my presentations. So now it’s “tiny” times two. But make no mistake, the largest increase in national capacity by far was in the mass installation of small solar units on rooftops across Australia. An extraordinary 1.6GW of solar PV capacity will be installed by the end of this year, mainly by desperate households in response to electricity bill pain and with half the cost of installation subsidized by other households. It’s a death spiral. More on that soon.

Wind power and solar power exceeded gas powered generation (GPG) for the first time. AEMO, Q3, 2018,

Most wind power is in SA and Victoria, and while solar PV is increasing everywhere, there is more in Queensland than anywhere else. Note the increases in generation are a lot smaller than the increase in capacity.

With all these statistics, keep your brain engaged capacity is not the same as generation because intermittent renewables sit around doing nothing so much of the time. And though capacity has increased 50%, actual generation has increased only about 20 to 30%.

We are still testing new boundaries in this national experiment. Wind power still makes up the largest source of “variable” renewables, though solar is catching up. In the last quarter, for the first time wind power generation exceeded gas power.

Of course, if it’s cloudy or not-so-windy in the next quarter, gas power will rocket back up again, but the underlying trend is clear. The disruption is only going to get worse.

Unreliable generation in Australia is forecast to increase from 4GW to 6GW

Across the NEM, current commissioning schedules indicate that approximately 2,100 MW of additional new capacity will have been added in the year to December 2018, made up primarily of wind and solar generation, as well as some battery storage. For context, the NEM’s total registered generation capacity in July 2018 was around 56,000 MW, of which wind and solar represented around 6,000 MW. (p 10-11)

In just one quarter we added 1.2 GW of large-scale solar and wind capacity

Increased penetration of variable renewable energy

• Over 1,200 MW of new large-scale solar and wind capacity began generating during the quarter. The amount of large-scale solar capacity that commenced generation during the quarter is higher than the NEM’s entire large-scale solar capacity at the start of the year. This, coupled with favourable wind conditions, led to record quarterly variable renewable energy (VRE) output which contributed to:

[Gas powered Generation] or GPG continuing its downward trend in 2018: year-to-date GPG at the end of Q3 2018 was at its lowest level since 2006 and 21% lower than in 2017. Q3 2018 was the first quarter on record in which wind output has exceeded GPG.

Quarterly NEM emissions reaching their lowest level on record, both in terms of total emissions and average emissions intensity.

Whether you believe in the occult New Age driven NWO or not, amongst their writings that I have seen, is a phrase that basically translates into “The NWO will try and get people to dump fossil fuels to protect ” Gaia”, but if the population refuses, we will force them”.

As I have said, this is a religious war. Its occult New Age vs humanity. A main bulwark against the NWO from what I have observed, is our Christian heritage, which is why Christianity is under heavy bombardment right now, both externally and also internally via climate change “judas sheep” within the churches…..

No probs. We can afford it. Almost. Just need to sell more coal to Asia. (Um, better tell those brats at the next Pied Piper demo not to wear their Stop Adani t-shirts.)

Seriously, does anyone still believe this is all just blundering and misplaced idealism? Your Gillard was put there, like your Turnbull. Shonky mediocrities like Gillard and Turnbull do grow on trees, but it takes a master hand to put them into the highest office of the land.

Nobody is this thick. There are plenty of thick people, I’m not of the brightest. But nobody, repeat nobody, is this obtuse.

The waste is meant to happen, the de-industrialistion is meant to happen, the social dislocation is meant to happen, the chaos is meant to happen. No other conclusion is possible.

If I knew why, I’d be one of Undead. I don’t want to know their motives, I just want their defeat. I’ll stay with the living the whole way.

Geoff, democracy does require a lot of coordination. You have to make sure that a Turnbull or Baird going back into a bank doesn’t bump a Macron coming out. And sometimes an ex-PM might have trouble practising law in a number of states. That’s what grateful Clintons are for. Then people need to be told how much they admire Julie Bishop’s killer heels. For that you need a free press.

Democracy requires all kinds of stuff to make it work. Just not democracy.

Mosomoso, remember Christopher Monckton predicted that Tony Abbott would be dethroned a year or more before it happened?
The MSM have climate change by the throat and are flogging it for every last $$, same as the rest with snouts in the CAGW trough!
Follow the money, see who is getting rich – certainly not you or me!

Unless we that question the religion can howl more and LOUDER in the MSM the sheeple and worse their lambs will continue to bahh bahh, rounded up by MSM and green dogs who keep barking at their heels as directed by leftard UN!

Yes, you don’t have to be an admirer of Abbott to know that there was something very wrong with the enthronement of Turnbull (immediately after the absurdity of his rehearsed choot-choot ride in the wake of Choppergate). The ABC was already on side, a clique at the Australian soon had even ultra-dry conservatives panting and slavering for Turnbull. (That free press at work again!)

We were only aware of the colossal gaffe the whole country had made when the oafish plutocrat opened his mouth and tried, unsuccessfully, to get a sentence finished.

My idea is that globalism is at its height right now. 95% globalist is not good enough for globalists. That’s like 95% pregnant. And Abbott was lacking that 5%. At some point he would have baulked: there would have been no mega-debt to soothe the French after their NATO restrictions, no Uphill Snowy, no $444 million to a pop-up green NGO with more board members than staff.

What amazing is that after several years of Liberal-flavoured Green Left government there are vistors to this site who are clamoring for several years of Labor-flavoured Green Left government. That’s a bit like suggesting that if the new Ben-Hur was a flop maybe it should be done on ice as a musical.

Tucked away in the small print of every mortgage is a statement to the effect
“Your home will be repossessed if you fail to keep up with your debt payments”.
Now try this instead “Your home country will be repossessed if you fail to keep up with your debt payments”.
Think it won’t happen? Think you’re too big to fail? Think that countries can’t go bankrupt? Think that printing money is the answer?

History has a long list of failed countries that say otherwise.
The more you grow your debt the less FU money you have.
This will not end well.
Brilliant U.T. Thanks. – Jo

Of course it is. Why do think the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are under such economic attack? North America isn’t immune, either (Canada and USA).

India seems to be being left alone, Pakistan is busy with Afghanistan. Singapore is cheerfully doing its own thing as is Malaysia. China has gotten Hong Kong back and is in the process of absorbing Zambia, it’s first `colony’ (see Unemployed Taxpayer above at #4 for the how…).

Who effectively invented industry and technology? It’s not about the Klimate … that’s just the excuse.

With this unexpectedly large increase I suspect we are about to get a very practical demonstration of the natural limit of the grid to frequency/voltage instability caused by renewables, especially wind.

At least the re-elected Vic government sees it coming with the ‘secret’ diesel generator farm on the mornington peninsula ready to go at a moments notice.

I bought my generator inverter last week and will do some trialling ahead of the hot weather and I may purchase an additional jerry can. Such is my faith in the AEMO’s capability to ensure electricity supply in the face of Dan Andrews’ policies

One rejoinder is to ask how much Wind contributes at the troughs or “choke points” when the delivery is less than 10% of plated capacity on about 30 days of the year. See if that is enough to keep the grid up on deep winter and high summer evenings when the demand is at the peak.

3 Dec: SMH: ‘Six panels a minute’: Two million Australian homes now have solar
By Peter Hannam
As of last week, there were panels on just over one-fifth of all Australian homes. Sunbelt states of South Australia and Queensland are nearing rates of one-third of total homes, or about twice that of NSW – where state support has largely been removed – and Victoria.
“It’s a combination: panel prices [nationwide] have never been this low and electricity prices have never been this high,” Warwick Johnston, managing director of consultancy SunWiz, said…

Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said households with solar were saving$540 a year on average on their power bills.
“An average of six panels a minute are being installed in Australia, with the Australian Energy Market Operator estimating an average of 10-20 panels a minute if large-scale solar projects are factored in,” Mr Thornton said.
The National Electricity Market – which supplies about 80 per cent of the Australian population – drew about one-fifth of its power from renewable energy sources in the past week, with solar eclipsing all but coal…

It will not be long before Queensland is again hit by severe cyclones. If there is one like that which hit the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and Gold Coast in Jan 1893 there will not be too many domestic and large scale solar plants left. So far Queensland does not have any operating wind farms. Maybe investors are concerned about them being smashed. One almost hopes for an act of nature to knock some sense into the stupid Queensland parliamentarians and government.
I can think of the perfect place (on existing Commonwealth land) relatively close to Brisbane and Sunshine Coast markets to have a large nuclear plant. I would love to hear the screams of the latte leftist elite at Noosa.

It will not be long before Queensland is again hit by severe cyclones.

That depends on the state of the Sun. It could be a while … but it could also be sometime early next cycle!
The Sun is going to sleep for a few years. But this does not mean there will be no cyclonic storms, merely that there may be fewer than would otherwise be expected and those which are whizzed up to speed, may be not be as strong as past storms.
You could still get your wish: SSC 24—the current cycle—although weak, and in it’s `death throes,’ still produced the X-Class flare which wound cyclone Pam up to Cat 5 before it ran over Vanuatu a few years ago! We have no idea what SSC 25 will produce.

Because, countering the fading sun trend is the concurrent weakening of the earth’s magnetic field which lost 10% of its field strength over the previous few centuries—no panic there—to c. 2000 and then accelerated over the last 15 years to lose a further 5% as the magnetic poles seem to be trying for a reversal. Eh what? 5% in a decade! [As Seen Here ]
( url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsqZJP54shg&t=1302s)

That weakening magnetic field gives the solar wind significantly greater effect in our atmosphere … so that could add to the destructiveness …
(As Ben Davidson [at 45:16 in the above video] put it: “There’s a bit of a disconnect there.” )

— trying to take the Oil Companies to court for alleged responsibility for Klimate Change, as Vanuatu has recently proposed as an attempt to meet costs for recovering from the destruction caused by cyclone Pam, might just not go very far at all with this sort of `evidence,’ for the defence and as corroborated by:

Another target who should hide, is Angeles Duran, the Spanish Registered Owner of The Sun might find it more economical to relinquish all claim when lawsuits for the reparations her property’s contributions to (or causation of) extreme weather and the damages caused by that extreme weather, start landing in her lap. As the owner, she has a `Duty of Care’ to ensure her property behaves as a `good neighbour,’ in a non-damaging way to other people’s property. I for one, would not have a bar of her were I an insurance company.

Solar Wind is implicated as a direct causative agent in large earthquakes magnitude 6 and greater, and then there are its effects on human longevity and health. Yep, distancing oneself a very long way from its ownership would be smart.

3 Dec: NDTV: AFP: World Bank Doubles Funding To $200 Billion To Fight Climate Change
The World Bank said the move represented a “significantly ramped up ***ambition” to tackle climate change, “sending an important signal to the wider global community to do the same.”
KATOWICE: The World Bank on Monday unveiled $200 billion in climate action investment for 2021-25, adding this amounts to a doubling of its current five-year funding…

Developed countries are committed to lifting combined annual public and private spending to $100 billion in developing countries by 2020 to fight the impact of climate change — up from 48.5 billion in 2016 and 56.7 billion last year, according to latest OECD data.

Southern hemisphere countries fighting the impact of warming temperatures are nonetheless pushing northern counterparts for firmer commitments.
In a statement, the World Bank said the breakdown of the $200 billion would comprise “approximately $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank.”
Around one third of the remaining funding will come from two World Bank Group agencies with the rest private capital “mobilised by the World Bank Group.”

“If we don’t reduce emissions and build adaptation now, we’ll have 100 million more people living in poverty by 2030,” John Roome, World Bank senior director for climate change, warned.
“And we also know that the less we address this issue proactively just in three regions — Africa, South Asia and Latin America — we’ll have 133 million climate migrants,” Roome told news agency AFP…
Roome said the money now being earmarked amounted to “about 35 percent” of the World Bank Group’s total financing.

Much of the climate action financing is being set aside for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, notably through development of renewable energy strategies.
However, the World Bank stated that “a key priority is boosting support for climate adaptation,” given the millions of people already battling the consequences of extreme weather.
“By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over (fiscal) 21-25, the World Bank will, for the first time, give this equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions,” the bank stated.

Given the urgency to act in the face of sea level rise, flooding and drought “we must fight the causes, but also adapt to the consequences that are often most dramatic for the world’s poorest people,” said World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva.
By stepping up financial aid to developing countries worst affected, Georgieva said the bank was committed to adapting infrastructure while investing in “climate smart agriculture, sustainable water management and responsive social safety nets” as well as early response networks…READ ONhttps://www.ndtv.com/world-news/world-bank-promises-200-billion-in-climate-action-investment-for-2021-25-1956812

oh, it needs to be raised…by the World Bank and the others allegedly partnering this “scheme”:

3 Dec: Bloomberg: World Bank Group ***to Raise $200 Billion to Fight Climate Change
By Molly Smith
New investment to support better forecasts, warning systems
‘We call on the global community to do the same,’ group…
That’s expected to build more climate-responsive social protection systems in 40 countries and finance “climate smart agriculture investments” in 20 countries…

the full “renewables” story is in the Press release, but not in the MSM:

3 Dec: World Bank Press Release: World Bank Group Announces $200 billion over Five Years for Climate Action
“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable,”… World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim said. …

“There are literally trillions of dollars of opportunities for the private sector to invest in projects that will help save the planet,” said IFC CEO Philippe Le Houérou. “Our job is to go out and proactively find those opportunities, use our de-risking tools, and crowd in private sector investment. We will do much more in helping finance renewable energy, green buildings, climate-smart agribusiness, urban transportation, water, and urban waste management.”…

Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said households with solar were saving$540 a year on average on their power bills.

……only if you ignor the capital cost, and depreciation of the initial installation.

The National Electricity Market – which supplies about 80 per cent of the Australian population – drew about one-fifth of its power from renewable energy sources in the past week, with solar eclipsing all but coal…

…False claim. !
Most of the solar capacity is in RoofTop Solar, Which is not part of the National Electricity Market. !

Has anyone ever wondered about that gigantic ‘powerhouse’ that is rooftop solar?

The average system is around 5KW, and there is now supposedly 8GW (which is 8,000,000KW) of rooftop solar installed, so that averages out to around 1.6 Million installations. (average, because there’s way more than that)

Now, keep in mind how the cost for those rooftop systems has fallen dramatically, so let’s just do the sums on today’s price, keeping in mind that the cost has fallen, so it’s way way more than this. The average cost for the average system is around $4000, so the total cost for all this rooftop solar is around $6.4 Billion.

That 8 GW doesn’t actually generate 8GW of power, as the Capacity Factor for rooftop solar is around 18%, so 18% of 8GW is 1440MW.

So, effectively, we have a 1440MW ‘powerhouse’ which has cost $6.4 Billion PLUS.

But it hasn’t replaced any 1440MW power plant, because this is 2 million or more of these tiny little distributed inverters spread across the whole Country, not one large power plant with four Units delivering power in one humungous bulk amount, that actually is useful.

But hey, renewables are just …. soooooo much cheaper than coal fired power, eh!

It’s not about the cost. Both major parties don’t give a damn about that. It’s about believing we must act on climate change, and in particular by the ALP+Greens at all costs. The LNP are not much better given Morrison has stated many times he still wants to keep reducing our emissions albeit not as much and as fast as what the ALP wants.

18% seems a little high. Our bowling club recently installed solar PV ( 18 kW) and checking the data around it seems 17% was the average (except that we have had a fair bit of cloudy weather recently). The actual result will be less as the panels aren’t facing the right direction or at the proper angle because the members, when they built the clubhouse 50 years ago never thought anyone would be short of reliable electricity..
At least the peak usage by the club occurs when the sun is shining.

“So, effectively, we have a 1440MW ‘powerhouse’ which has cost $6.4 Billion PLUS.”

And, unlike coal or hydro, does NOT provide “system support” functions – essentially, they have no inertia, so don’t provide frequency support, don’t respond well to reactive loads, and are likely to drop off-line at a moments notice even when there’s no fault.

“soooooo much cheaper than coal fired power”
You get what you pay for, and often less than that. “Renewables” are a poor substitute for “real” power from fossil fuels.

Ooooh! Used to be able to pay extra for “green” electrons. Since renew-a-bubbles are cheaper than fossil now, does that mean I can elect to pay more for fossil energy? If not, why not?

23 Aug: TheFifthEstate: Putting the brakes on Australia’s escalating solar panel waste issue
by Willow Aliento
What do you do with your solar panels when they are past their use by date? In the case of the Victorian Government you commission a study to find the best solution…
Reclaim PV, in Adelaide, has already built a business on recycling PV panels. It was started by Clive Fleming and David Galloway in 2014, spun out of their company Solar Maintenance and Renewable Technologies (SMART)…

3 Dec: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Why coal – and not renewables – is root cause of surging Australia power prices
New analysis from BloombergNEF (BNEF) shows that the rising cost of coal power generation in Australia’s is the primary – yet often overlooked – cause of the recent doubling of power prices on the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The new analysis from BNEF confirms that thermal coal power prices have doubled in two years, and in turn caused a doubling in the price of coal capacity in the NEM, so much so that wind and solar are now lower than even just the short-run cost of thermal coal from the spot market. The short run cost does not include the money spent on building a coal plant.
“This means that it is already cheaper to build a new solar or wind plant than burn export-linked coal in an existing, fully depreciated, coal plant,” BNEF analyst Ali Asghar says…https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-coal-and-not-renewables-is-root-cause-of-surging-australia-power-prices-78405/

plus an earlier piece about SA solar recyclers Reclaim PV, which some of the same stuff I posted in the Fifth Estate link, but lots more detail:

8 Jul 2016: RenewEconomy: Solar panel recycler leads Australia in emerging industry
by Andrew Spence
Recycled panels are not recirculated, they are dismantled using a Pyrolysis process developed to remove glues and recover glass, aluminium, solar cells and contacts
“We’re trying to value add to the cells so they can be reused – not as solar panels – but in new self powered products,” Fleming said.

Solar panels generally have a 20 or 25-year warranty but a small percentage of the 23 million solar panels installed in Australia are damaged due to installation or transport handling faults, or develop new faults each year…READ ONhttps://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-panel-reSolar panel recycler leads Australia in emerging industrycycler-leads-australia-in-emerging-industry-99038/

The cost of coal fired rose from $35-40 per MWh to $50-60 per MWh. That isn’t a doubling in cost. The increase is being attributed to a jump in coal prices due to increased demand.

If we take coal fired as supplying 75% of electricity then a $20 increase adds $15 per MWh to the wholesale price.
With 18% renewables and $80 subsidy, that adds $14.40 to the wholesale price.
So, if wind is so much cheaper then getting rid of the subsidy would reduce the cost to the public, especially if the percentage of wind increases.

Maybe some of any increase is demand for coal but I suspect it is instead demand for electricity. This at times when the suppliers can take advantage of the overall higher prices. If you destabilize the grid causing higher prices then I’ll show up with my coal any time I can and my price will be just under the (higher) market price at that moment. Better yet, at peak demand, I can have an idling plant just waiting for the right (profitable) moment to “compete” with a wind farm that has dropping wind or solar when clouds blow in.

This is actually disingenuous to say that the cost of the Thermal coal is having an effect on power prices here in Australia.

Nearly every one of those coal fired power plants own the mines where their coal fired plant is located, so they are using their own coal.

I’m actually not sure if the system in Queensland is being gamed by the State Government. They own all but one (and part of two others) of all coal fired plants in Queensland via two State Government entities, and those same two entities also own the coal mines supplying those coal fired plants, and they also own the rail network supplying those plants which are not alongside the power plants. It would probably be something that you’d never be able to find out. You know, sell the coal to yourself at the highest cost, and claim it back via increased cost for power.

3 Dec: BBC: Climate change: ‘Trump effect’ threatens Paris pact
By Matt McGrath
President Donald Trump’s words and actions are restricting global efforts to cut carbon, according to a new study.
The analysis says the US’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement has created the political cover for others to go slow on their commitments.
The author says the world is in denial about President Trump’s true impact…

But this new report. from the Institute of International and European Affairs, suggests that President Trump’s words and deeds are causing “very real damage” to the Paris agreement…
The author says that the US withdrawal from Paris has created the “moral and political cover for others to follow suit”, citing the examples of Russia and Turkey – which have both declined to ratify the Paris deal…
The switch to coal and oil investments has hurt renewable energy investment in the US and this has had a global knock-on effect, the author says.

On the political front, Russia, Turkey, Australia and Brazil have all cited the example of President Trump to limit their actions on climate change. Russia and Turkey have said they will not ratify the agreement…

The newly elected President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has sent mixed messages about climate change. But in recent days, his government has ruled out hosting next year’s major climate conference.
The impact of populist governments on the climate change agenda was also highlighted by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, speaking recently to the BBC…

While the EU, China and India have promised to take more ambitious steps to bolster the Paris agreement, study author Joseph Curtin believes they will be reluctant to take major steps without the participation of the US.
“There’s no way that the big player will upgrade their ambition without some sort of quid pro quo from the US,” he told BBC News.
“The likelihood that they will take on more ambitious pledges in the short term has certainly been damaged.”…

2 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Climate leadership collapse leaves UN chief with a daunting task
The coalition that built the Paris Agreement has broken down, leaving Patricia Espinosa with few powerful friends to call on to secure a deal in Katowice
By Sara Stefanini
As head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, she’s supposed to quietly mediate the contentious talks over global climate change rules. But in the end, it may fall on her ***to muscle countries to consensus and save the promise of the celebrated Paris climate agreement…
Her message to negotiators ahead of the summit: everyone must come ready to cede ground.

“There are many creative ways of trying to put together some landing zones that can make different parties have the minimum amount of comfort,” Espinosa told Climate Home News in an interview. “In multilateral agreements, it’s always finding this delicate balance where everyone can see his own position reflected, even if it’s not 100% what they would expect.”…

When you talk about wind power it is faceplate capacity. Somewhere in Oz there must be a chart that compares actual generation against faceplate capacity. The non-linear relationship between wind speed and output is surprisingly discouraging. Solar is equally finicky – it is approximately solar noon here in North Central Washington State on a clear bright sunny day (26ºF) and we’re receiving about 85 watts/meter squared of solar energy. It is well over 10 times that in the summer. It rose to 20W/m2 at 8:30am and it will be pitch dark by 4:00pm. We’re at about 47º north latitude here in a desert climate.

4 Dec: SMH Renewables: ‘Scientific fact’: NSW Liberals highlight climate difference from Feds
By Peter Hannam
The Liberal-led NSW government remains committed to cutting carbon emissions regardless of changes of policy by federal counterparts, Energy Minister Don Harwin will tell a Sydney conference on Tuesday.
Mr Harwin, who is due to speak at the NSW Smart Energy Summit just prior to former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, will make pointed comments about the “ongoing debate about energy policy in this country”…

The senior NSW minister said it remained his government’s “ambition” to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the state by 2050…
“We adopted this approach in recognition that climate change is a scientific fact and, as a consequence, all governments must address greenhouse gas emissions into the future,” Mr Harwin will say.
To achieve the emissions goal and to give investor certainty “it’s clear that energy policy must deal with the emissions trajectory over the longer term, in addition to addressing reliability” he said, adding that putting downward pressure on prices was also “at the forefront of our minds”…
NSW had achieved the goals of its Renewable Energy Action Plan, with the state’s energy system now in transition “to a more sustainable, cleaner and modern future”, Mr Harwin will say…

Same thing in the big house yesterday. ALP argue like clones with the exact same focus group polished words. Government beats around the bush but never come out with a full frontal attack on the lie.

Without the premise of CO2 causing dangerous climate change…there is no argument!

All the government need do is prosecute the argument…3% of 410ppm CO2 is world human addition and Australia is less than 1.3% of that 3%….of which we want to reduce our emmissions by 26%!!! CO2 cycles through our atmosphere and oceans every 8 to 20 years…not 200 plus years…look at the decline of atomic bomb test C14 spike concentrations for confirmation. Why destroy our economy for something the world human population has no control over. The CO2 concentration is not going up 3% a year…why kill our economy when thr combined population of India and China exhale at rest more CO2 tha our entire economy produces.

3 Dec: ABC: RCR Tomlinson administrators reveal debts of up to $630m from collapsed engineering firm
By Kathryn Diss
The administrators of failed engineering firm RCR Tomlinson have revealed the company has debts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, including up to $250 million owed to about 4,000 subcontractors and suppliers…
At its peak in August last year, RCR Tomlinson was valued at almost $1 billion.

Since McGrathNicol was appointed, the company’s workforce has reduced by 270, with most of the redundancies coming from the infrastructure arm, which includes its solar contracts…
McGrathNicol partner Jason Preston told creditors initial investigations revealed the company’s collapse was largely caused by problems with its solar farm developments, which left the business exposed to a number of risks, particularly if there were project delays…

The company had been a successful engineering firm for 120 years — predominantly in the mining and resources industry — before making its aggressive move into the solar industry.
RCR ran at the solar power movement hard and has been involved in building farms across the country, but it was a $57 million write-down on the value of two of its Queensland projects that burned it…
McGrathNicol partner Jason Preston: “The business has been challenged by unprofitable solar contracts within its renewable operations, however the balance of the business operates across industries which are seeing increasing demand for services.”
Among the solar projects left in limbo include the expansion of Synergy’s Greenough solar farm in Western Australia’s Midwest…

Subcontractors gravely concerned
The company owes between $100 million and $250 million to 4,000 trade creditors across the country, which includes subcontractors and suppliers…
The company is also facing a class action which was launched on behalf of shareholders in the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Lawyers Quinn Emanuel Urquhart and Sullivan filed the action, saying investors paid too much for their shares because the market was not informed of the problems the company was having with their solar projects.
Fundamentally, many analysts said the company ran too hard at the solar game without knowing enough about it, and found itself working in an environment of rising equipment costs, increasing wages and a lack of workers skilled in the renewable energy space…https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/rcr-tomlinson-administrators-reveal-debts-of-up-to-$630/10576754

3 Dec: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Carnegie laments solar-battery blow-outs as it returns focus on wave energy
Carnegie Clean Energy has lamented a series of major cost budget blow-outs on its solar-battery hybrid energy business, saying it was now planning to return focus on its core technology – wave energy, and the potential of what it hopes will be its first major commercial project, the Albany Wave Project.

Chairman Terry Stinson told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting after a year of massive losses, the departure of former CEO Michael Ottaviano, and now the failed attempt to sell its Energy Made Clean business, that he had no doubts where the problems lay.
“All the major EMC projects that were in train when I joined a year ago were over budget and behind schedule,” Stinson told shareholders of the solar and battery hybrid projects brought by EMC…

Stinson said that there was no doubt the EMC business delivered several “first of kind” hybrid solar projects – such as the CSIRO Standalone Power station at the one square kilometre Array Pathfinder – and the company had earned a positive reputation in the market for technical capability, customer support, quality, and project delivery. But not on budget.

He noted that hybrid solar is a very competitive market: “Winning orders requires aggressive quoting and low prices, leaving little margin for variances.” This left the company without enough funds to offset the costs of infrastructure or even enough staff to support projects.”…

Carnegie, of course, is not the only company to fall foul of the hyper-competitive market in solar contracting. Leading contractor RCR Tomlinson, a multi-billion engineering business, has called in administrators after a major cost blowout at one major project, and likely delays and other blowouts in other projects.

Carnegie’s challenge was, however, that it is still in the R&D phase for its prime purpose in life – developing wave energy technology, and suffered huge losses because of it and sent its shares to less than one cent.
“We have witnessed a world leading wave energy company attempt to expand into hybrid solar through the acquisition of EMC and fail to deliver a satisfactory outcome for shareholders,” Stinson said.
“The cost of this failure to the business and to shareholders was high. The Board has decided it is in the Company’s best interests to revert back to its roots, Wave and Marine Energy.” He noted that Carnegie’s wave opportunities have not diminished…

you think its the smell of grants, subsidies and juicy RET certs that lures these companies in thinking its easy money? like flies crawling into a fly trap and then realising there is no way out (at least that they can find)

3 Dec: PV Mag: Beijing prepares to take more planned approach to solar
By Vincent Shaw
Curtailment issues will prompt Chinese government to focus on new project development in the urban east, to reduce power losses. The central authorities also want to ramp up the electricity trading market and peak shaving technology.
Two branches of the government have reportedly agreed to focus on ensuring solar power projects are based in the east of the populous nation, because transmission infrastructure failings in the north and northwest of China have led to unacceptably high curtailment issues (LINK includes: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has estimated that roughly 3.28 terawatt-hours of solar capacity was curtailed from the Chinese grid in 2016).

Curtailment – energy that is generated but wasted – has attracted the attention of the central authorities as part of the government’s plan to get the most from solar, while reducing the strain on the public purse (LINK)…
The figures cited by the state bodies illustrate the problem is even more pronounced in the wind power sector. Whereas the solar ambition is to keep curtailment below 5% this year and maintain the achievement for the next two years, the wind power traget this year is to limit power losses to less than 12%, falling to the same level as solar in 2020.

The national curtailment figure for both types of renewable energy has risen to more than 10% this year, from around 6% in the previous two years. Within that national figure, energy losses can be as high as 30% or more in China’s north and northwest, where abundant solar and wind resources are counterbalanced by the difficulty of transmitting clean energy to the nation’s sprawling urban centers…https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/12/03/beijing-prepares-to-take-more-planned-approach-to-solar/

These comments remind me of the line allegedly said to the Wright Brothers – “It will never fly Orville” The ship has sailed, renewables are a major component of our energy supply, we should be talking about adaption.

Read the article above, renewables are a major component, providing more power than gas, and around 20% of all homes now have solar on the roof. As to your statement ’bout H20 and C02, of course water vapour is more abundant than carbon dioxide. read the previously posted list about the physics involved and why C02 matters. Note: physics not chemistry is important here.

ain interview with your your best mate Will Happer, where he disagrees with the scientific consensus on climate change, stating that “Some small fraction of the 1° C warming during the past two centuries must have been due to increasing CO2, which is indeed a greenhouse gas”. So he thinks C02 has a role and that role is increasing as the amount of gas increases.

from the American National Centre for Atmospheric Research
Molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) can absorb energy from infrared (IR) radiation. This animation shows a molecule of CO2 absorbing an incoming infrared photon (yellow arrows). The energy from the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate. Shortly thereafter, the molecule gives up this extra energy by emitting another infrared photon. Once the extra energy has been removed by the emitted photon, the carbon dioxide stops vibrating.

This ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy is what makes CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Not all gas molecules are able to absorb IR radiation. For example, nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2), which make up more than 90% of Earth’s atmosphere, do not absorb infrared photons. CO2 molecules can vibrate in ways that simpler nitrogen and oxygen molecules cannot, which allows CO2 molecules to capture the IR photons.

Greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect play an important role in Earth’s climate. Without greenhouse gases, our planet would be a frozen ball of ice. In recent years, however, excess emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities (mostly burning fossil fuels) have begun to warm Earth’s climate at a problematic rate. Other significant greenhouse gases include water vapor (H2O), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3).

I’ve dealt with some thick heads in my time, but you have raised that particular benchmark.

Empirical | Definition of Empirical by Merriam-Websterhttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical
Definition of empirical. 1 : originating in or based on observation or experience empirical data. 2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory an empirical basis for the theory.

It DOES NOT trap anything, it passes it on immediately, almost all of it to the other 99.96%b of the atmosphere, where convection, advection and conduction and other air movements take it upwards.. all regulate by the gravity based thermal gradient.

Tests with CO2 in double glazing show it has LESS resistance to thermal transfer than normal air.

Peter F, lets try a different way of approaching your problem: Please provide empirical evidence that no other explanation exists for all or part of the apparent climate change attributed by some to atmospheric CO2.

If I may disagree with you Peter, you mention further down that CO2 absorbs and re-radiates energy. While I don’t disagree with this statement, it’s worth remembering that a CO2 molecule is not that “bendy”, to use a non-technical term. So it can’t re-radiate energy very well, and it only re-radiates in a couple(?) of narrow wavelengths. ,But these wavelengths are “covered” as it were by the abundant H2O molecules, which re-radiate much more efficiently on exactly the same wavelengths, thus “drowning out” any possible effects that CO2 radiation could ever have. There is lots of interesting info out there which explains far better what I’m trying to say.

“Renewables” are significant thanks to hydro – but we are not allowed to build any more dams.
Hydro is the only reliable “renewable”, delivering on average about 9% of demand, and playing a very significant role in ramping up to meet peak evening demand when solar is non-existent, and wind may or may not be available. So we could shut down all wind and solar, save all that investment, and still have enough generation from reliable coal, gas and hydro to meet demand 24/7.

and still have enough generation from reliable coal, gas and hydro to meet demand 24/7.

Takes me back fifteen years and brings a tear to me eye it does…… Precisely what we had, and power we could afford. CO2 was plant food, and apart from a few nutjob alarmist all was right with the world. Apart from Bin Laden of course.

Run that past the service department of any major car manufacturer about cars built pre 2007 ish, and see what they say. Also, all fuel outlets have lists of cars that cannot use ethanol, and those that can with percentages listed. Be warned. Many cars have been towed. I can’t find it now, but the RACV had quite a database on it.

Great blog Tony you put this rooftop power into it’s proper perspective.
And that means it’s a tiny, tiny bit of of something far bigger and better;
ie the Ausralian power grid powered by king coal.
GeoffW

Peter, the Wright brothers knew that their plane would fly because they understood the science. So there is no comparison with the present day discussion of renewables. And as for your comment that renwables are a major component of our energy supply . . well just take a look at Tony’s blog at #13 above.
You have to be joking son.
GeoffW

Apart from hydro, you could shut down every bit of wind (happens quite often, naturally)

and every bit of solar (happens some 60+% of the time) and it would make basically no difference to the supply system

That is how completely UNIMPORTANT wind and solar are.

Shut down even a fraction of coal/gas, and the system struggles because it can’t rely on wind and solar to provide.

THAT IS HOW IMPORTANT COAL/GAS FIRED ELECTRICTY IS.

The IDEAL system would be one with coal and gas able to provide 100% of demand at all times with wind and solar being used in places where wires can’t easily reach or its not important to have reliability (the ABC for instance).

Wind and solar, without the idiotic manic subsidies, would be nothing but a little niche market, instead of an extreme DISRUPTOR of the grid.

The math tells me that without fossil fuels (king coal) the Australian grid would collapse in seconds ie it could not exist.
Do the math on that my son and while you’re at it explain to us all how you would power this country with the 18GW min grid demand required, at night and with no wind. You have to be joking boy.
GeoffW

The math tells me that without fossil fuels (king coal) the Australian grid would collapse in seconds ie it could not exist.
Do the math on that my son and while you’re at it explain to us all how you would power this country with the 18GW min grid demand required, at night and with no wind. You have to be joking boy.
GeoffW

You confuse capacity with output, these are low output high capacity (IE overbuilt) assets , because of the intermittent nature of the energy source they need to be up to 5 times more powerful (and expensive) than they need to be. That is wasteful of the earth’s resources. That’s in producing to their capacity factor

In terms of 95% reliable energy 6GW of this plant can’t be relied upon for more than about 30 MW even if they had 12 hours of storage.

It’s like the disingenuous comparison between Capacity Factors (CF) of wind power and coal fired power. Wind power is always quoted at around 38%, even though the actuality is almost right on 30%, and even though that 30% is the ACTUAL figure, I get laughed at and the renewable urgers only believe the higher figure of 38%, and offshore closer to 50-55%. Then they quote the CF for coal fired power, mentioning around 55 to 60%. Now, how they did that was that in earlier days, before wind and solar, you had all those old and ancient plants acting as Rolling Reserve, or Spinning Reserve, so not actually delivering any power, and they would all be taken in as a whole, lowering, (and by a considerable amount too) the CF. That’s why the CF for coal fired power has risen markedly since those old clunkers closed down.

Now, those older plants have all closed, and what we have left are only those plants running and delivering power all the time. Even so, you have periods like the last few weeks when an average of 12 Units have been off line for scheduled maintenance, so zero power from them, and with that many units off line, again, that artificially lowers the CF, making coal fired power look unreliable.

So, as an exercise over a whole (working weekday) day of full power generation, and on three or four separate occasions for full days, I isolated just those Units actually on line and delivering power to the grid, and worked out the CF for the full day.

Now, contrary to what you are told that coal fired Units cannot change their output to follow the Load, that they are totally inflexible, and take days to run back up to power delivery, they actually do that every day, on an hour to hour basis, varying by anything up to 4500MW across the whole fleet of Units here in Oz, up and down every day, and twice a day in Winter. (4640MW variation low to high just yesterday in fact, and it’s not even Summer yet)

So, just those Units, all of them on line and delivering, anything up to 40 Units, they averaged a CF across the full day of 89 to 92%, and during the evening Peak, for around 4 to 5 hours, up and beyond 98%.

As for NG fired units, similar to coal fired units, while ever the fuel goes in at the front end, up to full power comes out the other end.

In much the same manner as those LCOE, anything that can make coal fired power look bad is fair game, and anything that makes wind power look bad is ‘verboten’.

4 Dec: ABC: David Attenborough, Arnold Schwarzenegger lend green star power to open UN’s COP24 climate talks
by ABC/AP
Global consensus demands end to fossil fuels
“In short, we need a complete transformation of our global energy economy, as well as how we manage land and forest resources,” (UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres) said…
He said governments should embrace the opportunities rather than cling to fossil fuels such as coal, which are blamed for a significant share of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The remark was directed at host Poland, which relies on coal for 80 per cent of its energy.
But Polish President Andrzej Duda later told a news conference the coal-rich country would reduce its reliance on coal but would never entirely give up its “strategic fossil fuel”…

Guterres: ‘Political will has faded’ for Paris
He later told reporters realities of global climate changes were, “worse than expected, but the political will is relatively faded after Paris” and was not matching the current challenges…

‘America is more than one leader’
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action film star and former governor of California, said the United States was “still in” the Paris accord to curb global warming despite President Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from it.
Schwarzenegger said he wished he could travel back in time, like the cyborg he played in his film The Terminator, so he could stop fossil fuels from being used.
“If we would’ve never started in that direction and used other technology, we’d be much better off,” he told conference delegates…

Calling Mr Trump “meshugge” — Yiddish for “crazy” — for deciding to withdraw from the Paris accord, Schwarzenegger insisted the climate deal had widespread support at local and state levels in the US…

3 Dec: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: UN Kicks Off Climate Summit With Alarmist Message — Act Now Or Face The Collapse Of Civilization
•Thousands flew in from all over the world to attend the UN’s climate summit.
•The UN spent months hyping the conference in order to convince world leaders to cut more emissions.
Attenborough did not mention the thousands of UN climate summit participants and observers who, like himself, who had to fly, drive or travel by rail to the conference in Poland. The UN has yet to disclose the conference’s full carbon footprint…https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/03/un-climate-summit-starts/

3 Dec: AP: The Latest: Dutch PM: All must be involved in climate fight
7:25pm: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says politicians need to win over all of society for measures needed to tackle climate change…
Asked about recent violent protests in France against fuel price hikes, Rutte said “you have to bring (this knowledge) along to the whole of society in a way that people understand.”
He said “that means talking, talking, talking. With all societal organizations, politicians, all citizens being involved if they want to.”

4.50pm: A Swedish teenager who takes time out of school each week to highlight the danger of global warming says world leaders who are skipping a U.N. climate summit are “very irresponsible.”
Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg traveled to Katowice, Poland, for the start of the two-week talks and delivered a speech on Monday to some of the decision-makers at the conference.
Speaking afterward to The Associated Press, Thunberg said the absence of leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel “shows what they prioritize.”
Thunberg, who protests outside the Swedish parliament each Friday, said of politicians not in attendance: “In the future we will look back, and we will either laugh at them or we will hate them.”
Her activism has inspired other students from as far away as Australia…

10.45am: No global climate summit would be complete without a few celebrities.
Monday’s gathering of ministers and national leaders for the start of the U.N. talks on tackling global warming is getting a dose of glitz.
Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has long campaigned against climate change, is expected to draw crowds, while there are reports that other Hollywood celebrities will make an appearance as well.
Other VIPs attending the meeting in Katowice, Poland, include adventurer Bertrand Piccard, who co-piloted the first solar round-the-world flight, and Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, whose climate campaigning has received support from students around the globe.
VIDEO: Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old climate activist from Sweden, described geoengineering _ the idea of massive man-made manipulation of the environment to try and counter climate change _ as “very scary.”https://www.apnews.com/221f09cc15db46bf932d4d5e9788888a

4 Dec: Daily Mail: AP: Arnie calls Trump ‘meshugge’ – ‘crazy’ in Yiddish – for pulling out of Paris climate deal and says he’d like to go back like The Terminator to STOP all fossil fuel use
Schwarzenegger later told The Associated Press he has converted his signature Humvee trucks to run on hydrogen, electricity and biofuel and only allows himself to eat meat three days a week.
‘I mean, maybe it tastes delicious, but I think we should think then and there before we eat about the world and about the pollution,’ he said. ‘So I discontinued eating meat four days a week. And eventually, maybe we’ll go to seven days’https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6455213/Schwarzenegger-calls-Trump-meshugge-climate-accord.html

“A mouse sniffs the air, catches the whiff of cat urine, and runs towards the source of the smell… and straight into the jaws of a cat. This bizarre suicidal streak is the work of a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has commandeered the mouse’s brain and turned it into a Trojan rodent—a vehicle for sneaking T.gondii into a cat.

T.gondii (or Toxo for short) infects a wide variety of mammals, but it only completes its life cycle in the guts of a cat. To get there, Toxo has ways of subverting the behaviour of dead-end hosts like mice. Its machinations are subtle, so subtle that it’s normally hard to tell an infected mouse from an uninfected one. But the difference becomes obvious when there’s cat pee in the air.

Normal mice, even lab-born ones that have never met a cat, have an innate fear of cat smells. Those infected with Toxo do not.

2/10/2015
Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.

At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism. The evidence is prima facie: From a feudal order that lasted a thousand years, produced zero growth and kept workdays long and lifespans short, the countries that have embraced free-market capitalism have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work days have been halved and lifespans doubled.

Figueres is perhaps the perfect person for the job of transforming “the economic development model” because she’s really never seen it work. “If you look at Ms. Figueres’ Wikipedia page,” notes Cato economist Dan Mitchell: Making the world look at their right hand while they choke developed economies with their left.

Here’s Lomborg’s latest IEA World energy update for 2018, where he claims that about 0.8% of TOTAL energy is now generated by GEO+ S&Wind. He also states that this may increase to just 3.6% from S&W by 2040. See energy graphs 2018 and in 2040.

In practical terms and very simple maths this does not even rate a mention and won’t change the climate at all, but will waste endless trillions $ for a guaranteed ZERO return.

Fortunately no fossil generators were mothballed/blown up as a result of that 1.2 GW of additional large solar and wind capacity streamed in Q3. But what did happen was that about $2 billion investment was added to the grid, seeking a return on investment, guaranteed by the RET. With total large scale “renewables” capacity now reaching 6 GW, that’s about $10 billion of investment, plus no doubt further investment in the network to support that distributed and variable new generation capacity.
Add to that the 8 GW of rooftop solar that as Tony estimates above has cost a further $6 billion.
Who pays for the return on that total $16 billion plus investment?
Why electricity consumers of course.
Surely all renewable energy advocates (including those 50% renewable State Labor governments, those Pied Piper students, all Labor and Green candidates, and leftie Liberals) should now be protesting outside every coal and gas station demanding they be shut down immediately to save the planet. Every shutdown of fossil generators will save money in labour costs, equipment maintenance, and fuel costs.
Oh, but just a minute, don’t we still need all those fossil generators for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing? Despite all that new investment, AEMO is still issuing warnings about the fragility of the network as we approach peak summer electricity demands.
Yet some naive (dumb?) politicians still claim that electricity prices will come down. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.
The only winners have been the investors in “renewables”, with profits guaranteed by the government RET. Case in point, Hepburn Wind annual report for 2017/18 shows electricity sales generated $917,000 income, sales of renewable energy certificates generated $834,000. That equates to 8 cents/kWhr from generation sales, and a further 8 cents/kWhr from retail consumers.

3 Dec: The Hill: Kudlow calls for end to subsidies for electric cars, renewables
By Megan Keller and Timothy Cama
White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday the Trump administration will seek to end subsidies for electric cars and renewable energy sources, according to reports.
Kudlow said he expected subsidies for electric cars would end by 2020 or 2021.
“We want to end, we will end those subsidies and others of the Obama administration,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

It’s unclear how the administration plans to cut the tax credits, since Congress enacted them and would have to act to end them…
Utilities also get tax credits for producing wind power and for installing solar power equipment. Those incentives, enacted before former President Obama took office, are on track to phase out in the coming years…

4 Dec: Reuters: White House seeks to end subsidies for electric cars, renewables
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday the Trump administration wants to end subsidies for electric cars and other items, including renewable energy sources…
“As a matter of our policy, we want to end all of those subsidies,” Kudlow said. “And by the way, other subsidies that were imposed during the Obama administration, we are ending, whether it’s for renewables and so forth.”
Asked about a timeline, he said: “It’s just all going to end in the near future. I don’t know whether it will end in 2020 or 2021.”…

2 Dec: AP: Groups decry meat-heavy menu at climate talks
Three environmental groups are criticizing the organizers of global climate talks in Poland for having too much meat on the meeting menu.
The U.S.-based groups said their analysis showed that twice as many meat dishes as plant-based ones are being offered in the main food court of the conference venue…

The Center for Biological Diversity, Farm Forward and Brighter Green said that if all meeting participants choose meat dishes, it would be the equivalent of burning half a million gallons of gasoline.

AP is churning out CAGW rubbish by the minute. in many cases, searches for their individual stories, show up results with the “World Bank” nonsense – World Bank ups climate funding to $200 billion – attached to them, spreading the idea much is being done, e.g. when looking for the German/coal story u will get results such as:

The Latest: World Bank ups climate funding to $200 billion – ABC News (America)
16 hours ago – The governor of Germany’s most populous state says it’s premature to set a firm date for phasing out the use of coal-fired power plants…

German Official Says Coal Deadline Is Premature
New York Times (AP) – 3 Dec 2018
The governor of Germany’s most populous state says it’s premature to set a firm date for phasing out the use of coal-fired power plants, as environmental campaigners are demanding…
North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet told Germany’s Funke media group that such a move shouldn’t be tied to the global climate conference starting in Katowice, Poland, on Sunday…
Laschet says Germany’s decision to stop mining and burning lignite coal “must be considered seriously and decided with broad consensus.”
***Laschet, whose state has large lignite mines, warned that even if a date for exiting coal is set, it should be reviewed in the 2030s to avoid jeopardizing electricity supplies.

Coal Dependence of Summit Host Poland Called Out
New York Times (AP) – 3 Dec 2018
Dozens of environmentalists have picketed the site of a former coal mine in Poland that is located near to where a global climate summit is being held. Polish group Action Democracy said on Sunday that its supporters were protesting Poland’s continued reliance on coal, a particularly dirty fossil fuel.

3 Dec: Reuters: Slovak court orders detained Greenpeace activists to stay in custody
By Tatiana Jancarikova
A Slovak court ordered 12 Greenpeace activists, who were detained after protesting against a coal mining company, to remain in custody on Sunday until a trial.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, however, said the court’s decision was questionable.
Fifteen activists from the Czech Republic, Belgium and Finland were detained on Wednesday after hanging a banner reading “Stop the age of coal” from a tower at a coal mine that supplies one of Slovakia’s most polluting power plants.

No one was harmed during the protest but the mining company, HBP, said 342 miners underground were put in danger as all operations at the premises were halted for several hours.

Three of the activists were released on Wednesday, while the rest were charged with a criminal offence of endangering a strategic utility.
The regional court in Prievidza, central Slovakia, did not set a date for a trial. Lawyers for the activists filed an appeal against the decision to keep them in custody, Greenpeace told Reuters.
If the decision is upheld, they could stay in the pre-trial custody for up to 12 months…

Climate Change carbon taxation leading to French Revolution II: Vive la France!
written by Stephen Z. Nemo
Dec 2, 2018
”
WASHINGTON: You may not have heard, but anti-government riots are breaking out in Paris, France as a consequence of climate change carbon taxes. That consequence, of course, is higher fuel prices, which have added additional financial burdens to one of Europe’s heavily taxed populations.

this Reuters piece has changed considerably from what you see here. violent yellow-vest comparisons & calls for renewable energy etc have been removed:

Thousands march peacefully in Brussels against global warming
Reuters – 1 day ago – The peaceful Sunday march contrasted with the much smaller yellow-vest protests that degenerated into violence on Friday. … Organisers of the climate march urged more renewable energy, more cycling paths and cleaner air, through “a socially just transition”…

it is now 5 paragraphs…& so many Reuters staff involved?

2 Dec: Reuters: Thousands march peacefully in Brussels against global warming
Reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Antonia Kerrigan and Christian Levaux; Editing by Toby Chopra and Peter Graff
PIC: protesters wearing polar bear costumes
Belgian police said some 65,000 people participated in Sunday’s “Claim The Climate” demonstration, many of them on their bikes…
Belgium’s liberal Prime Minister Charles Michel called the march “a formidable success” and promised to defend “ambitious targets” at the two week-long U.N. climate change summit which opened on Sunday in the Polish city of Katowice…
The organisers called for ambitious climate policies to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with goals set by the Paris Agreement in 2015…https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-belgium-demonstration/thousands-march-peacefully-in-brussels-against-global-warming-idUKKBN1O10HS

fortunately, the original is still available where it has been carried by other MSM:

3 Dec: BusinessTimesSingapore: Reuters: Thousands of Belgians march peacefully against global warming
Belgian police said some 65,000 people participated to Sunday’s “Claim The Climate” demonstration, many of them on their bikes…

The peaceful Sunday march contrasted with the much smaller yellow-vest protests that degenerated into violence on Friday. While the yellow vests called for lower fuel prices, demonstrators on Sunday wanted a reduction of gas emissions.

“many of them on their bikes” reported Reuters!
keep in mind metro stations were shut & roads were blocked off to stop the yellow-vest protesters getting into central Paris (tho some FakeNewsMSM reported it as being necessary in response to the violence!):

2 Dec: AFP: Big Brussels climate march marks COP24 start
The well-mannered crowd was filled with activists and many families, with children holding placards asking politicians to fight harder to assure a greener future…
The march, dubbed Claim The Climate, ended with speeches and performances at the Parc Cinquantenaire that overlooks the European Union institutions…

26 Nov: Brussels Times: Andy Sanchez: Free buses in Brussels for Sunday’s climate march
The Brussels Interurban Transport Company (STIB) will offer its buses and trains free of charge on Sunday to encourage and facilitate the broadest participation possible in the “Claim the Climate” march in Brussels, the regional public transport company announced on Monday in a press release.
The STIB recalled that the Climate Coalition, linking more than 70 Belgian civil-society organisations, and the Climate Express citizens’ movement are organising the Claim the Climate march on Sunday 2 December…

“The STIB, in agreement with its line minister Pascal Smet, will offer its network free of charge on 2 December,” the public transport company announced in its press release.

While the former MP bowed out of electoral politics last year to start her political management school in Lyon, the Institut de Sciences Sociales Economiques et Politiques (ISSEP), and normally withholds comment on current political affairs, Ms Maréchal said felt she had to speak up for the Yellow Vests.
“In front of the attitude of those in power, their class contempt for the ‘Yellow Vests’ and their surrealist response to their demands, I could not help it,” she said, according to (LINK) Le Figaro…

Saying she arrived shortly after 2 pm, she said, “When I arrived on the Champs-Élysées, the real ‘Yellow Vests’ were long gone. The movement was totally absorbed by left-wing activists. We heard: ‘death to capitalism!’ If this is the far-right, it has changed.”

Aljazeera had a whole half-hour yesterday, with no mention of green or environmental taxes, carbon emissions, or anything related to CAGW policies. no mention of the PM and President calling off their trips to COP24. total focus on Paris. well-trained guests:

2 Dec: Bloomberg: France’s Dangerous Yellow Vest Protesters
By Gregory Viscusi; With assistance by Helene Fouquet
“The ‘gilets jaunes’ movement will probably peter out, but not the anger, which is likely to go on and take new forms maybe more dangerous for Macron,” said Jim Shields, a professor of French politics at Warwick University in the U.K. “It’s hard to see how he can complete controversial reforms like pensions and unemployment insurance without yet more blood on the pavement.”…
It’s now expanded to other demands and has the support of three-quarters of the French public, polls show…

“We are talking about cost of living and Macron is talking ecology,” said Joffre Denis, a 33-year old fireman who had come 125 miles from his home in the north of France to Paris, wearing a yellow vest at Saturday’s protest. “His solution for people who can’t afford food by the end of the month is to buy solar panels and electric cars.” Denis said that after 17 years on the job, he takes home 2,300 euros ($2,600) a month.
“We pay more and more for fewer and fewer services. Where is the money going?”…
The French tax burden is the second-highest in the developed world…
Denis said he condemned the violence…

In a speech Nov. 27 (Macron) outlined the need to maintain the gasoline taxes as part of efforts to wean France off fossil fuels, but offered “town hall-style” debates about the country’s environmental policies and vague promises of reviewing future tax increases…

Although I’ve given up on the Libs it’s high time that Morrison grew a pair and calls out Turnbull for what he is .
Turnbull was just on his ABC praising his baby the NEG and wants the Libs to reinstate it as good policy ,after all the party room did vote for it .

Morrison needs to explain to the simpletons why Turnbull was ditched and why the NEG was ditched .

Excellent.
The only downside is that this decision by the court was based on the incomplete/irregular zoning approval.

When a similar decision is made on the very real problem of health and well-being caused by Ultra Low Frequency Pulsing, then I’ll be sure and certain that justice is possible for all wind turbine victims.

What hope have Australians got when the minor parties are too small to compete to form government and the two sides that share government and opposition cooperate on many matters including unreliable energy, Paris Agreement, UN Agenda 21 & 30, much more.

And without a really effective opposition governments can ignore constitutional law, impose UN Treaties without holding a Referendum as the Constitution does not allow foreign interference in our nation’s affairs.

read the article and do the maths, as shown the renewable target is above 18%, renewables generate more than gas. Cherry picking a windless cloudy winters day in the far south does not prove your case. And in your repeated assertion that C02 does not have and affect – some empirical evidence please. Unless it is just a rant, don’t bother in that case.

Do your homework Pete, the NULL hypothesis is not that human CO2 has no effect but rather it has no proven practical effect because.

Natural CO2 emission estimation error is 4 times human emission.

Natural CO2 emission inter-annual variability isn’t known and isn’t accounted, if the variability is greater than human emission you can never be sure human emissions are a significant driver over the noise of natural emission variability.

Models have failed to properly represent tropospheric temperature as measured by weather ballons and are high by a factor of 3 ironically the amount of assumed feedback.

The global temperature remains in the historical range for the Holocene – the warming is not unusual at all.

The tropical hot-spot is missing which implies recent warming is not driven by humidity feedbacks from CO2

Satellite IR measurements show IR emission increasing with temperature confirming that water feedbacks do not exist or are negative.

OCO satellite CO2 measurements show that large cities other than Shanghai don’t source significant CO2 and that most CO2 comes from tropical forests. Oddly mankind deforestation of the tropics has probably reduced CO2 emission over what would have been naturally emitted were we not here.

In the end multiple lines of evidence show that human CO2 is not a significant player in either atmospheric CO2 concentration or climate.

2 Dec: UK Times: The energy firms based in family homes
‘Factories’ that churn out Ofgem licences have changed the market, but not for the better. And they could lead to higher bills for customers
by Ali Hussain
Oaklands Road in Bridgend, south Wales, is like any other suburban street. Lined with grey and white pebble-dashed 1930s semis, it has caravans parked in some driveways and neatly trimmed front lawns. But one house, halfway along the road, is also the headquarters of an energy company granted a licence to challenge the might of the big six suppliers. Not that you would know by looking at it.
Bosses at the company, One Wales Energy, say they found it easy to obtain a licence to supply energy. They simply bought a ready-made firm from another company — a process sanctioned by the energy regulator Ofgem.

Things have not gone well for One Wales Energy, however. The company has been unable to raise the £2.5m it needs to start supplying energy, according to Judith Cook, a director.
Its latest accounts show it had assets of just £9,375 in October 2017. “We are in the process of winding it down,” said Cook. The business is far from unique.
In January 2016, about six months before Ofgem changed its rules to spark more competition, 228 firms held a licence; today there are 315. The number of firms actually supplying energy has nearly doubled from 40 to 73 over the period.

3 Dec: UK Times: Eversmart Energy’s advance payment tariff sparks warning from Citizens Advice
by Emily Gosden
Britain’s leading consumer charity has sounded the alarm after a small energy supplier began taking advance payments of about £1,000 per customer and marketing its tariff like a financial savings product.
Eversmart Energy started encouraging households to pay for a year’s energy upfront in October, shortly before it missed a deadline ***to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds it owed through a green energy scheme.

It is marketing the tariff as “better value than an Isa or a high street savings account”, because it claims to pay 12 per cent interest on credit balances.
Citizens Advice warned of “serious implications” if such large advance payments become widespread because Ofgem rules stipulate that if a supplier goes bust all other households can be forced to pay for honouring its customers’ credit balances…https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6e3572ae-f673-11e8-a7ad-f292e75f50c3

Eversmart is caught up in the following:

21 Nov: CityAM UK: Ofgem has opened an investigation into two energy providers which it suspects are partly to blame for a £59m hole in a green energy fund
by August Graham
Electricity providers who do not get enough of their energy from renewables are required to pay into the fund, which supports major green energy projects across the UK.
Ofgem said that it has already collected around half of the £103m shortfall it identified at the end of August, but there is still £58.6m missing from the fund.
The regulator also said it will require URE Energy and **Eversmart to make up their deficits in monthly instalments ending in March next year.
If they miss that deadline, Ofgem said it is “ready to issue a final order to require full payment”…

Ofgem also announced it was missing £4.2m from a fund designed to redistribute the costs of paying private energy producers for what they feed back into the grid.
Households with solar panels on their roof are paid by energy suppliers, who are later compensated from the so-called periodic levelisation fund.
The regulator said it will write to suppliers who did not meet their contributions to the levelisation fund…

2 Dec: UK Times: James Coney: James Coney: The energy market is broken and the boss of Ofgem is to blame
There has been a catastrophic failure of regulation in the energy market — and it is pushing up everyone’s bills.
Today we reveal how Ofgem’s bungled attempt to increase competition in the market has allowed hundreds of companies to snap up licences to supply electricity or gas — with hardly any checks made on them.

Would-be energy entrepreneurs have been able to pour into the market by handing just a few thousand pounds to energy licence “factories” such as Utiliteam and Utiligroup. This gives them the right paperwork to run a supplier, but not the expertise. Many of these ventures never got off the ground. Others did, then went bust.
The regulator Ofgem has now announced a clampdown, saying it will revoke some of the licences, but the damage is already done.

1 Dec: Centrica: The power plant next door
Suzanne Schutte is a supermarket worker – and an energy pioneer.
The mother of two from Wadebridge, Cornwall is the first householder to have solar panels and cutting-edge battery technology installed as part of a £19 million trial that aims to help unlock further renewable energy use across her part of south west England.

What makes this scheme different to thousands of other rooftop solar schemes across the world – and what makes Suzanne a pioneer – is that the electricity generated by the solar panels and stored in her battery won’t just be used by her home or sold back into the grid.
Under the Cornwall Local Energy Market, homes and businesses will eventually be able to trade electricity with each other directly. This gives them greater control over their energy use and greater access to cleaner and cheaper electricity.
By taking part in the scheme, Suzanne joins a select band of people in communities across the globe trialling new ways of using and trading energy that are underpinned by the latest digital technology.

***The need for schemes like the Cornwall Local Energy Market has been created by the rise of renewable energy and the inability of existing power grids to move this energy around efficiently…

Old-style grids – such as that found in the UK – are not designed to move electricity from thousands of small power plants over short distances. Instead, electricity continues to be fed over long distances to central points in the grid, then fed out again…
This can create curious anomalies. Around the country, many wind farms have had to reduce their power output because of an excess of energy on the grid – due to strong winds and low demand – while major energy consumers including nearby factories have no way of accessing that extra electricity.

Being able to store and move electricity at a far more local level can help smooth out supply and demand, and address many of the problems caused by the intermittent nature of renewable electricity generation.

All,
As much as intermittent energy is having a heyday now it must all come screaming down not because of the trillion dollar revolution but because that trillion dollar revolution has to be repeated every 15-20 years and the second/third/forth one around there won’t be any subsidy and some of the raw materials will become harder to mine.

Early adopters such as Germany are facing that now. Puerto Rico learned this after the last hurricane that destroyed all its vulnerable weather exposed generation in 6 hours.

This disaster is not going to be quick, it’s the replacement costs that are going to burn.

3 Dec: Guardian: Coal, coal, coal and soaring emissions – as a Liberal, I have had enough
by Oliver Yates
(Oliver Yates is a member of the Liberal party and former chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation)
The failure of the existing Liberal party to address climate change or to support an integrity commission is unacceptable.
Nowhere is this failure more obvious than in its continued support for the Adani coalmine and new coal-fired power stations.
I expected more from Scott Morrison after the Victorian walloping. Instead we get the very same. Slippery answers to everything. Coal, coal, coal and soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

Refusing to reduce emissions as cheaply as possible is irrational, immoral and economically reckless. Achieving emission reductions of just 2% a year as proposed by the Labor party in the electricity sector costs very little and won’t risk system stability or security…

And the final insult – allowing the Adani coalmine to proceed when it lacks a social licence, is completely inconsistent with the need to tackle climate change and frankly smells with donations, overseas trips and wedding parties…
We desperately need an integrity commission to investigate potential conflicts of interest that see a revolving door between the coal industry and minister’s offices…

what The Guardian didn’t tell their readers (don’t know how this has worked out for Yates):

16 Oct 2017: AFR: Oliver Yates sets up new business to cash in on energy prices
by Ben Potter
Oliver Yates and the former ACT Deputy Chief Minister Simon Corbell – a champion of renewable energy–- have set up Clean Energy Derivatives Corporation (CEDC) to raise $250 million to back contracts with wind farms and solar farms that effectively bet on future National Electricity Market prices…

CEDC chief executive Ashleigh Antflick said that although each CfD amounted to a bet on electricity prices the company would manage its overall exposure carefully within an agreed risk framework.
Mr Antflick and Mr Yates worked together at Elementus Energy, a solar farm developer that won an ACT government solar energy auction when Mr Corbell was ACT environment minister, before Mr Yates became chief executive of the CEFC…READ ONhttps://www.afr.com/news/oliver-yates-sets-up-new-business-to-cash-in-on-energy-prices-20171016-gz1yab

VIDEO: 4 Dec: news.com.au: Malcolm Turnbull tells energy summit that many coalition members don’t believe in climate change
Malcolm Turnbull says a significant number of coalition MPs don’t believe in climate change as he condemns the ‘idiocy’ that saw his energy policy dumped.
by Charis Chang
Malcolm Turnbull has condemned the “idiocy” that saw his National Energy Guarantee abandoned, while painting new Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a supporter of the policy.
Speaking to a packed room at the NSW Smart Energy Summit in Sydney, Mr Turnbull expressed his disappointment the energy policy was dropped after he was toppled as prime minister.
“It has been abandoned by the federal government, I regret that, naturally, as does just about everyone in the federal government,” Mr Turnbull said.

“It did have the overwhelming support of the party room, and indeed the Cabinet. There was a minority of Coalition MPs who effectively torpedoed what was fundamentally a very good, technology agnostic energy policy.”…

“I just want to note that I did not abandon the NEG as our policy, but in fact it remained. But in the frantic last week of my prime ministership, and the insurgency that undermined it and ultimately brought it to an end, the Cabinet resolved not to introduce the legislation until we were confident we could secure its passage,” he said.
“Anxious to keep the government together, I didn’t want to see an important piece of economic legislation being defeated on the floor of the House. Anyway, that was very disappointing.”

After his speech, Mr Turnbull was asked by a member of the audience why he didn’t lock in a clean energy target when he was prime minister and had the chance.
Mr Turnbull pointed to the members of his own party.
“The challenge is that in the Coalition, there is a huge gulf between members on their views on energy,” Mr Turnbull said.
“There is a significant percentage of the Coalition members who do not believe that climate change is real, who believe that we should get out of Paris (agreement).”
When asked by reporters later how many climate deniers there were in the coalition, he said he didn’t know. “You’d have to go and ask them all,” he said…

Mr Turnbull told the summit some MPs would rather build a new coal-fired power station than Snowy 2.0, including Barnaby Joyce, who made that suggestion in the last week of the Wentworth by-election.
“You have got a very entrenched difference of opinion and the people that hold those views have been, as you saw with the National Energy Guarantee, prepared to cross the floor, blow up the government in order to get their way.
“I have to say, I gave this my best shot.”…

“Part of the problem with the politics of energy, at least at the federal level, it has been bedevilled by what I would call ideology and idiocy,” he said.
“I mean I would — there are people who would look you in the eye and say: ‘Coal-fired power is cheaper, new coal is cheaper.’ And I’d say: ‘OK, what price of coal are you assuming?’
“Crickets. How much coal do you have to burn to generate a megawatt of power? Crickets. What’s the coal plant going to cost to build and operate? More crickets.
“This is not a religious issue. This is an issue that has to be grounded in engineering and economics. We know that we need to decarbonise, and by the way, we have the opportunity to decarbonise and deliver cheaper power as well. So how good a deal is that?”…

Mr Turnbull strongly encouraged his colleagues to work together to revive the National Energy Guarantee, echoing comments from former foreign minister Julie Bishop who said the coalition should work with Labor on the policy…
Mr Turnbull later added that “apart from me and Josh (Frydenberg), Scott was the minister most involved in the work on the National Energy Guarantee”…
“Ensuring a competitive market and the protections of consumers is very important but you’ve also got to have the certainty of integrated climate and energy policy so that you get the investment,” he said…

He said a key issue was the timing of the closure of coal-fired power stations as well work to as connect sources of energy like solar farms to transmission lines that would deliver the power to where it was needed…
Mr Turnbull said the good news was that renewables combined with storage was now cheaper.
“So many people on this issue in the political realm live in the past. They live in a fact-free zone,” he said. “It’s really important to look at what is happening out there. The technology is changing.”…

There was one last question from the audience that struck a chord with many of those present: “Seeing as the Liberal Party seems incapable of not preselecting climate change science deniers, is the way forward that moderate Liberals run as independents and win?”
But Mr Turnbull said it was important not to judge the Liberal Party based on the actions of federal MPs.
“There is a particular problem with the federal coalition at the moment, a political impasse if you like but you shouldn’t judge the Liberal Party overall simply by them, particularly the state parties where their track record is very different,” he said

The “transition” to intermittents. Conjures up thoughts of a smooth well ordered movement from one state to another. A movement where the desired state is a known, and the benefits and consquences are known, and that somebody has a plan and overall control.

In reality we have exactly the reverse. There is no plan, and no overall engineered design. Intermittents are just thrown at the grid, consquences are someone elses problem and nobody has control. The left/green/alarmist crowd will all look startled when it collapses in a heap and start pointing fingers in any and all directions.

I note that the CERES data as presented by Willis Eschenbach does seem to show cooling over all the northern hemisphere, since 2000. World oceans seem about the same with some warming of the Arctic ocean, Antartica and part of the southern hemisphere, mostly Australia.https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/05/cooling-down-the-land/

4 Dec: SBS: AAP: French PM ‘to suspend fuel tax increases’
France’s prime minister is reportedly expected to announce the suspension of fuel tax hikes that led to riots.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was due to announce the suspension later on Tuesday, a government source said, in what would mark President Emmanuel Macron’s first significant U-turn on a major policy since taking power in 2017.

There’s a great introduction to the French Revolution by Peter McPhee from the Uni. of Melbourne in this on-line learning series I followdd a few years ago. It’s free and you can just sign up and see how it goes at your own pace.

***BBC has a single use of the word “environmental”, nothing more about CAGW policies:

4 Dec: BBC: France fuel protests: PM Philippe ‘to halt fuel tax rise’
Mr Macron says his motivation for the increase is ***environmental, but protesters call him out of touch – particularly with non-city dwellers who rely on their cars…

Protests continued into Monday. About 50 “yellow vests” blocked access to a major fuel depot in the port of Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille, and petrol stations across the country have run out of fuel.
Students in about 100 secondary schools across the country held demonstrations against educational and exam reforms…
It is unclear whether the groups of students and health workers have directly aligned themselves with the “yellow vests”…https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46437904

Deutsche Welle even worse, if that is possible; no mention Macron also cancelled COP24 attendance:

4 Dec: Deutsche Welle: Macron’s government expected to ditch fuel tax hike
by kw/rc (AFP, Reuters)
Macron’s government expected to ditch fuel tax hike…
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe canceled a planned trip to the COP24 climate conference in Poland on Sunday to meet with Macron over the unrest. Philippe is expected to announce the fuel tax suspension after meeting with lawmakers in his Republic on the Move party.https://www.dw.com/en/macrons-government-expected-to-ditch-fuel-tax-hike/a-46570630

4 Dec: France24: AFP: Macron considers ‘strong gesture’ to end fiery tax protests
French leader Emmanuel Macron faced growing pressure on Monday to find a way out of the deepest crisis of his presidency after protests over taxes sparked Paris’s worst rioting in decades.
As dozens of people were brought to court over Saturday’s clashes, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe met with ministers and with the heads of the main opposition parties to discuss ways of resolving the tension.

A meeting was planned on Tuesday with moderate members of the movement, which has waged two weeks of nationwide demonstrations over fuel tax and the rising cost of living.
But on Monday, “yellow vest” representatives who had extended a hand of dialogue after the Paris riots said they had decided against attending the talks with Philippe for “security reasons”.

Jacline Mouraud and Benjamin Cauchy, two of the leaders of the protests, told AFP they had received threats from hardline protesters who warned them against entering into negotiations with the government…
Philippe’s office said he would announce “measures” in favour of the protesters…

Culture Minister Franck Riester told reporters the premier would announce “a strong conciliatory gesture in the coming days”, without giving details.
Macron postponed a planned visit to Belgrade due to the “problems” at home, his Serbian counterpart President Aleksandar Vucic announced on Monday…

Some of those who appeared in court Monday had long criminal records for violent crime and clashing with police, but others included a 21-year-old with a master’s degree in finance, sources said…
On Monday, the protests spread to around a hundred schools nationwide, which were partially or totally blocked by teenagers voicing frustration over university entrance reforms…

six tiny paragraphs, but at least it mentions “climate change” and “environment”:

4 Dec: EuroNews: REUTERS: French government preparing to suspend fuel tax increases – source
(Reporting by Simon Carraud and Marine Pennetier; Editing by Laurence Frost and Keith Weir)
The so-called “yellow vests” protests, which started on Nov. 17, were focused on denouncing a squeeze on household spending brought about by Macron’s taxes on diesel, which he says are necessary to combat climate change and protect the environment…https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/04/french-government-preparing-to-suspend-fuel-tax-increases-source

4 Dec: CNBC: French government reportedly set to suspend fuel tax hike after violent protests
by Holly Ellyatt
The news was carried by French newspapers Le Figaro, Le Monde and Liberation, as well as news agencies Reuters and AFP. Both the prime minister’s and president’s office declined to comment on the reports when contacted by CNBC…
TWEETS
The riots have been described as the “worst in a generation” and “pre-revolutionary.”

Analysts had already said that Macron faced a stark choice of either watering down his controversial carbon tax or potentially facing more trouble…

4 Dec: Bloomberg: French Government to Suspend Fuel Tax to End ‘Yellow Vests’
By Helene Fouquet
Philippe will announce his decision in the morning to governing party lawmakers, Agence France-Presse reported, citing the PM’s office…

???“A moratorium will not do at this point,” Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an environmentalist and a close ally of Emmanuel Macron, said on France Inter. “The President will have to take over after that and put other things on the table.” Cohn-Bendit, one of the leading figures of the May 1968 protests in France said, cited more measures on the wealth tax and income taxes.

???The grassroots, leader-less Yellow Vests movement is struggling to structure itself with representatives. Philippe’s office said that a meeting planned later on Tuesday with representatives of the movement had been cancelled.

As demands by protesters expand to higher wages and less taxes, the government may struggle to end the movement — which now threatens to spread to high school students and farmers — with a moratorium. Some protesters have asked for higher minimum income, a demand that Geoffroy Roux de Bezieux, the head of the business lobby Medef, rebuked in an interview with Le Parisien. “If the minimum wage increase has to be paid by companies, it will mean jobs destruction,” he told the newspaper.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/french-govt-to-suspend-fuel-tax-to-end-yellow-vests-protest

Sun weaves a far-right story, with “anarchists” (not far-left?), links to The Times:

4 Dec: UK Sun: SACRE BLEU-TURN Emmanuel Macron ‘set to cave to protesters and SCRAP fuel tax rises’ in humiliating U-turn after worst riots in 50 years
Right-wing thugs and masked anarchists joined the ‘Yellow Vest’ fuel price protesters last week
by Peter Allen in Paris and Mark Hodge
“It will mean that none of the fuel surcharges set for the new year will take effect,” said the source…

But Yellow Vest fuel protesters who have reduced Paris and other cities to warzones over the past two weekends said their protests would continue as they campaign for more tax reductions.
“It’s a first step, but we don’t want crumbs,” said Benjamin Cauchy, a spokesman for the movement, which takes its name from the high visibility yellow jackets that all motorists are expected to own in France.
“Demonstrations will continue as we fight for further demands,’ said Mr Cauchy
He added that he had received “30 death threats” after pleading for his movement to halt its campaign of violence…

Previously, Macron had insisted that fuel prices had to rise in line with green initiatives made necessary by the Paris Climate Change agreement.
But following two weekends of violence, French police admitted they “can’t cope” and called on the government to send in the Army ahead of a third weekend of riots…

Yves Lefebvre, a member of the Unité SGP police union, told France Info radio that security forces at the weekend were exhausted by the carnage.
He said: “The (officers) don’t want to remain as the last rampart against insurrection. We can’t take it – I call on the president to face up to his responsibilities.”
But despite the reported government u-turn, the carnage could continue regardless.

Extremist brochures obtained by The Times (LINK) shows that ultra-right wing groups are seeking to turn the unrest into a full-blown revolution…
The estimated 300 ultra-right militants who took part in Saturday’s violent demonstrations in Paris were reportedly well-organised and mostly avoided arrest.
The “yellow vest” movement, named after the high-visibility jackets of lorry drivers,said that they would return to the capital next weekend.
And there have been calls online to block roads and oil refineries around the country while other demonstrators plan to march on the Élysée Palace.https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7893163/france-government-cancel-fuel-tax-rises-protests/

two “ultra-rights” and one “far-left”. just happened to disappear!

4 Dec: UK Times: French protests: Macron’s scalp will not satisfy violent extremists
by Adam Sage, Paris
The extremists behind much of the violence in Paris last weekend are seeking to turn France’s anti-tax revolt into a full-blown revolution. Brochures obtained by The Times show that ***ultra-right groups want to use the explosion of popular anger against President Macron to overthrow “the system”.

An estimated 300 ***ultra-right militants were present at Saturday’s demonstration as it degenerated into the worst rioting in Paris since 1968. They were joined by several hundred ***far-left activists as they built barricades, set fire to cars and buildings and attacked police.

Stars at COP24.
Just saw David Attenborough, Arnie Schwarzenegger at COP24 Poland. Just turned the TV off!
I challenge Sir David Attenborough to produce hard evidence that CO2 emissions are going to make the planet uninhabitable…ever!

These guys both are pretty smart. Why would they believe this c…p? One possible for political reasons, but Attenborough is old and (should be)wise enough to be not part of that.

Well , that Dr Spencer argument falls more than a little short !
..He concludes ” were it not for its (Venus) extreme Greenhouse effect …”…..WTF ??
So he actually agrees and reinforces the point he was arguing against .
He completely overlooks the Atmospheric pressure factor. !

4 Dec: Sky: France to suspend fuel tax hikes amid unrest
The suspension will be accompanied by other measures aimed at calming two weeks of nationwide demonstrations by the protesters, according to the sources…

The protests, which started on 17 November, were focused on denouncing a squeeze on household spending brought about by Mr Macron’s taxes on diesel, which he says are necessary to combat climate change…

30 Nov: Sputnik: Yellow Vests: No Coincidence Macron, Merkel and May are in Dire Straits – Journo
by Ekaterina Blinova
The ‘yellow vest’ upheaval has exposed longstanding problems in France’s economy, Christine Bierre, French journalist and chief editor of Nouvelle Solidarité, has told Sputnik, adding that to heal these wounds, the French need to get rid of Brussels’ diktat and take back control of their financial system…

‘Over a year, diesel prices have increased by 23 per cent and those of gasoline, by 15 per cent. These hikes [in prices] hit those who live in rural areas and who need energy not only for their cars, but for tractors if they are farmers, boats if they are fishermen, trucks for transporters, fuel for construction workers and for heating’, the journalist said…

***’Concretely, expenses for energy have gone from 12 per cent per household in the 1960′s, to ***30 per cent in 2018′, Bierre stressed. ‘For a couple with two kids using a diesel car and fuel to heat, taxes increased last year by 600 euros; the price of diesel for tractors went from 50 cents a litre to 87 cents, so a farmer using 20,000 litres per year, will pay 7,400 euros more in taxes on energy’…

‘Along with the energy price increases on international spot markets, the real culprit behind the huge rise in energy prices ***is the tax on energy products, TICPE (Taxe Intérieure de Consommation sur les Produits Energétiques), created in 2000, and used by the state to heavily improve its tax revenues’, she elaborated.
Bierre explained that today this tax ‘represents 57 per cent of the price of diesel and more than 60 per cent of the price of gasoline, mainly because since 2014, the TICPE includes a tax to finance the costs of the energy transition.’

‘This is a progressive tax that grows every year ***according to a supposed price of carbon per ton of CO2, which is to reach 100 euros in 2030!’ the journalist remarked. ‘In 2015 it was at 14.5 euros, in 2017 — 22 euros in 2017, in 2018 — 44.6 euros and so on.’

3 Dec: WSJ editorial: The Global Carbon Tax Revolt
The French are the latest to refuse to sacrifice growth for green piety.
France’s violent Yellow Vest protests are now about many domestic concerns, but it’s no accident that the trigger was a fuel-tax hike. Nothing reveals the disconnect between ordinary voters and an aloof political class more than carbon taxation.

The fault line runs between anti-carbon policies and economic growth, and France is a test for the political future of emissions restrictions. France already is a relatively low-carbon economy, with per-capita emissions half Germany’s as of 2014. French governments have nonetheless pursued an “ecological transition” to further squeeze carbon emissions from every corner of the French economy. The results are visible in the Paris streets.

President Emmanuel Macron and his Socialist predecessor François Hollande targeted auto emissions because they account for about 40% of France’s carbon emissions from fuel combustion compared to 21% in Germany. But this is mainly because France relies heavily on nuclear power for electricity. Power generation and heating account for only 13% of French emissions, compared to 44% across the Rhine. French road-transport emissions were a mere 0.4% of global carbon emissions in 2016, when overall French emissions were less than 1%.

Yet Paris insists on cutting more, though transport emissions are notoriously hard to reduce. Cleaner engines or affordable hybrids have been slow to emerge. Undeterred, Mr. Macron pushed ahead with a series of punitive tax hikes to discourage driving.

The protesters in Paris will be expected to pay much of the up to €8 billion annual tab for a minuscule global benefit—that’s how much tax revenue Mr. Macron thinks his levies will raise. This is preposterous in an economy that still has an 8.9% jobless rate (21.5% for the young) and will struggle to hit 2% annual GDP growth. Yellow Vests from less prosperous rural areas, who depend on cars for daily life, know it. They’re insulted when Mr. Macron tells them to wait for better public transport or to carpool—yes, he really said that. They also assume that Paris will waste a fuel-tax windfall on boondoggles such as unreliable renewable power to replace zero-emissions nuclear plants.

The carbon tax revolt is world-wide. Voters in Washington state last month rejected a carbon tax that would have started at $15 per ton of emissions and climbed $2 a year indefinitely. Washington ranks 25th among American states in carbon emissions and when we tried to estimate its contribution to global emissions our calculator couldn’t handle a number that small. Gov. Jay Inslee and green activists nonetheless wanted voters to pay $2.3 billion in taxes over five years.

Ontario province in Canada is suing to block a federal carbon tax, and the issue could topple the Alberta government and perhaps Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Ontario Attorney General Caroline Mulroney warned that the federal tax grab “takes money from families’ pockets and makes job creators less competitive.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Energiewende—a transition to renewables that has increased dirty coal emissions and caused household energy costs to soar—has become a political liability.

A carbon tax is in theory a more efficient way than regulation to reduce carbon emissions. But after decades of global conferences, forests of reports, dire television documentaries, celebrity appeals, school-curriculum overhauls and media bludgeoning, voters don’t believe that climate change justifies policies that would raise their cost of living and hurt the economy.https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-global-carbon-tax-revolt-1543880507

4 Dec: BBC: France fuel protests: PM Philippe suspends fuel tax rise
France’s PM has announced a six-month suspension of a fuel tax rise which has led to weeks of violent protests.
Edouard Philippe said the measures would not be applied before proper debate had taken place with those affected…

How has the news been received?
Bruno Retailleau, the Senate leader of the centre-right opposition, the Republicans, said the reported moratorium was “absolutely inadequate”.
“If it’s in the real sense of the word, i.e. simply delays before the tax rise is actually introduced, that’s not what is needed, it will not calm things down.”

Far-right leader Marine le Pen concurred, tweeting (in French) that a postponement, rather than cancellation, of the tax did not go far enough.

4 Dec: Le Monde: “Yellow Vests” live: “No tax deserves to endanger the unity of the nation”
Edouard Philippe speaks live on television to announce the “freeze” of three fiscal measures including the increase on fuel scheduled for January 1.

“I consulted the social partners, local elected representatives, associations, parliamentarians, officials from all parties, and listened to the French and their representatives, and I draw two conclusions:

◾The French who donned the yellow vests like their country. They want taxes to go down and work to pay. If I have not managed to express it, it is because we have to change something…

“I measure reality, strength and gravity, it is the anger of France who works hard, struggles to make ends meet.This France is back to the wall.This anger has its source in a deep injustice, that of not being able to live worthily from the fruits of one’s work, while working days start early and end late. ”

“Many French people express their anger on the roundabouts, the tolls … This anger comes from far, it has long incubated, it has often remained dumb out of modesty or pride.It is today expressed. deaf or blind not to see or hear it.”

What impact on the budget after the tax measures announced by Edouard Philippe?

These three tax measures announced by the Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, in front of the LRM deputies – suspension for six months of the increase of the carbon tax, the convergence diesel-gasoline and the increase of the taxation on diesel off-road contractor, were expected to bring back four billion euros of tax revenue to the state next year. If they are suspended for six months, this automatically makes two billion euros in lost revenue for public finances, or 0.1 percentage point of GDP. Which will compromise a little more the government’s budget path for next year.

The public deficit is so far officially expected at 2.8% of GDP in 2019. If we add the probable slowdown in growth to the ecological tax measures already announced (plan of 500 million euros) and the moratorium Today, it is no longer impossible for the 3% deficit threshold to be exceeded next year…

The measures taken by the government to calm the anger of “yellow vests”, according to World news:

◾Suspension for six months of the rise in the carbon tax, diesel-gas convergence and the increase in taxation on off-road diesel fuel.
◾The government is temporarily abandoning the increase in technical inspection conditions on automobiles that was planned for next year.

unfortunately, Sky’s Outsiders has just shown the following as being from Paris. it isn’t. it’s London. no yellow vests. police, not gendarmes, no French accents, London monuments in the background, etc.

Fantastic analysis by Roger Andrews at the Euan Mearn’s Energy Matters site on the costs for storage to stabilise annual demand if solar and wind were to provide 100% of electricity production without massive overbuild on capacity, based on Germany’s grid.